


Counting the Ways

by parcequelle



Category: Holby City
Genre: F/F, Love Letters, Phone Calls & Telephones, Phone Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-23
Updated: 2016-10-30
Packaged: 2018-08-24 06:51:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8361787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parcequelle/pseuds/parcequelle
Summary: Whenever she has a spare moment to think of anything but what’s in front of her, she thinks of Serena. Always, always Serena.





	1. Chapter 1

As bad ideas go, Bernie thinks, this one was a cracker. She sits at the window of her small but functional flat in Kiev and drinks appallingly cheap liquor – _horilka_ , she has learned; she always learns the most important words first – straight from the bottle, and revels in the fact that no one can tell her not to smoke inside; that no one here would care even if she did. She stares out the window, grimy from pollution and seemingly endless days of rain, and doesn’t cry.

Two weeks, four days, ten and a half hours have passed since she walked away from Serena; two weeks, four days, ten and a half hours since she first thought about rushing inside from the carpark, back into their office and into her arms, and begging Serena to forget it ever happened and take her back. But she didn’t do that, did she, because she’s Bernie bloody Wolfe, and that would have been too much to ask of her pride.

She opens the window a crack and stubs out her fag and leaves it, still vaguely smouldering, on the rough brick windowsill, watches as the spark fizzles down into nothing. The perverse thing is, she doesn’t even regret the leaving part, not really. She doesn’t regret forcing Serena into the position of having to be sure, of having to come to terms with this radical change in her outlook on her own sexuality without having Bernie there to … distract her all the time. Bernie swallows, kicks at the wall in front of her as desire curls low in her belly – if she were back there now, she thinks, they’d be off-shift, perhaps at Albie’s; or perhaps Jason would be conveniently absent and they’d have bypassed Albie’s altogether in favour of—

“No good’s going to come of that, Wolfe,” she mutters, “come on.”

She looks down at her phone and sees that it’s only 8pm; maybe she’ll call her liaison and find out if they need any help down in ICU. She’s heard on the grapevine that they’ve been a bit short-staffed, and it’s not as though she’s got anything better to do.

*

She starts doing it a lot, after that: working one-and-a-half or double shifts and then coming home late and bone tired, collapsing into bed to escape her own thoughts. It works a charm, too, at least until her phone starts beeping, every incoming message raising her heartrate to near-impossible in the stupid, naïve hope that it’s Serena, as though it’s _her_ duty.

The phone has been almost mysteriously silent, the last two weeks, but then it’s like the dam breaks and they all start coming: emails from Raf to ask after her and the job; texts from Dom to update her on his latest relationship dramas (which have the doubly positive effect of always making her laugh, and which she immediately appreciates as his effort to find out how she’s doing without forcing her to talk about her feelings). She gets a couple of texts from Cam, just a few words each time, but they always serve to brighten her mood, and once, she even gets a message from Charlotte: _Hope all’s well in Kyiv, Mum_ , it reads. _Thinking of you._

She’s flying high on that one for days.

From Serena, there’s nothing, but she expects nothing less. Bernie’s the one who did the runner, after all.

She’s halfway through week three when the dreams start, and they catch her off-guard because they’re just so … uncharacteristic. After so many years of bunking down wherever and whenever she could get some rest, any bed with a mattress in a room of her own is pure luxury. Bernie isn’t one to lie awake all night, tossing and turning; she lies down and then she sleeps and then she wakes up and that’s that, and she doesn’t usually remember much in between. But this morning, of all mornings, the dingy sunlight washes through the gap between her curtains and she cracks an eye open and groans, because—

—oh, _God_. She wriggles around in her suddenly-too-hot sleep shorts and soft old t-shirt, trying to find a comfortable position, some relief, but the movement doesn’t help her at all. Or maybe it does, she thinks, rolling her eyes at herself, depending on one’s point of view. She lies there, completely still, and reaches into her memory for a more concrete grip on what’s caused this, but beyond a fleeting image of Serena’s flirtatious smile, the echoed impression of small, strong hands on her body and skin hot against skin, she can’t quite—

Bernie’s body is tingling with the sensation, with the _want_ , and she knows herself: she knows that if she doesn’t take care of this now it’s going to be plaguing her and distracting her all day. Her fingers are met with warm, slick readiness and she bites down a moan at the contact, despite the fact that no one is there to hear her. She brings herself off in under thirty seconds – a personal record – and, for the sake of expediency, doesn’t even pretend not to think of Serena.

The problem is this: that that one orgasm, ripping and desperate and heated and satisfying though it was, just isn’t enough. It serves to take the edge off, helps her to wrangle her concentration in her meetings and later in theatre, but whenever she has a spare moment to think of anything but what’s in front of her (in the lift, in line for coffee, going out for a fag), she thinks of Serena. Always, always Serena. She sees the sharp dark clarity of Serena’s eyes above her surgical mask as they watch one another in theatre; sees and can almost feel her warm, steady hands. She thinks of Serena’s playful answering smirk when Bernie teases her – flirts with her – in their shared office; she thinks of Serena’s outstretched hand that morning, the day she’d accepted the secondment – _“Oh, I’m sorry … Serena Campbell, have we met?”_ – and how she’d taken it, how she’d thought the charge between them when they touched might well be enough to stop her own heart. How they’d kissed, not long after, Serena’s eyes hot on her own and her lips even hotter, closing the gap—

“Snap out of it, Major,” Bernie tells herself. A wary-looking orderly gives her a glance – he has overheard her say it – but she’s fairly certain he doesn’t speak much English. But what would it matter, really, even if he did? He doesn’t know the context, doesn’t know the increasingly-heated, distinctly work-unrelated thoughts that are racing their way through Bernie’s mind. There’s something freeing about living somewhere where communication is limited to certain high-powered people; where no one in the immediate vicinity knows of your sordid history with women or the state of your no-longer marriage.

She bargains with herself, promises that if she focuses on the job at hand right now, she’ll allow herself to make up for it later. To get it out of her system, she thinks.

It’s a great plan, apart from the fact that it doesn’t actually work. The dreams continue, usually fading before she can get a real hold on the images, but the result is always the same: she wakes up wet and desperate, overcome by a physical need she hasn’t felt since her earliest days with Alex, and even then; even then, she was in a war zone, they were working, and she was better able to compartmentalise the need. But Serena – Serena is 1500 miles away, two hours earlier in the day, and Bernie feels the burn of her kiss and her smile and her gaze as though she’s standing right before her, or just off in the next room, as though she’s just moments away from walking up to Bernie, backing her against the locked door and kissing her senseless.

After a week of this torment, the memories of her every interaction with Serena playing on and on in an absurd, inconvenient, lust-inducing loop in her mind, she finally gives in and texts Dom. She figures he’s safest; ironically, given how rarely they work together these days, he’s still the one who knows more about her private life than anyone excepting Serena, and she can’t exactly text Serena, now, can she? There will have been rumours about the two of them since her departure, she’s sure, but it seems she’s going to have to rely on Dom’s discretion yet again if she wants any peace.

She hasn’t yet answered his last text anyway, so it’s perfect; she sends him a quip about Isaac, just to get his attention, and then taps out, _So tell me, Dr Copeland, what’s your advice to a patient who can’t stop thinking?_

She tucks the phone back into her pocket, not expecting an immediate reply, but Dom must be either bored or on a break, because her trousers buzz just a few moments later. _Officially, call psych. Unofficially, drink your weight in Ukrainian vodka._

She texts back, _Thorough regimen of treatment already attempted, results unsuccessful._

He sends her a smiley face, then: _So what’s eating the Wolfe?_

Bernie snorts; there are so many terrible jokes she could make to that – she’s certain he’s fishing, too – so she just types back, _Dreams._

_The good or bad kind?_

She hesitates a few minutes before replying, _The distracting kind._

There follows a long pause from him – they are both at work, after all – but she sees his reply two hours later when she steps into the frigid air for a caffeine and nicotine hit. Her cigarette is dangling between her lips, still unlit, when she snorts out laughter at the words on the screen. _Professional opinion: sounds like some long-distance phone sex is in order. But obviously I have NO IDEA what you’re talking about & you definitely didn’t get this from me._

A heartfelt, expletive-riddled declaration of gratitude later, she tucks the phone away, but she’s smirking.

*

She can’t stop thinking about it. She can’t stop thinking about it, but she couldn’t do it, could she? She isn’t like that, isn’t that vocal or explicit, and anyway, how could she do it to Serena? Serena’s so … well, honestly, if she really thinks about it, she _can_ imagine that Serena might be up for it. Serena might be exactly brave and flirtatious enough to try, but even if she is, they’ve both still got a few bridges to cross before they get to a place like that. Bernie files it away for later, though, a delicious possibility that coils its way into her veins (Serena, hot and panting, her shirt ripped open, her head tilted back, one hand on her phone and the other—) and makes her literally shake her head to force the images out, to allow her any hope of functioning as a human, let alone a doctor. She files it away for later and thinks about what she can do instead, and it isn’t long before realises what it is.

She could email, of course, but there’s something about it that strikes her as too clumsy, too impersonal; it’s something she always associates with business alone. Besides, as much as she relishes the thought of Serena blushing and squirming behind her desk at work, she prefers the idea of her reading the words to herself, late at night, where there’s no risk of anyone else’s eyes seeing what is meant for Serena alone.

She’s been trying to find ways to kill time, anyway, so the next day, after her shift, Bernie pops into an odd sort of multi-purpose convenience store on the hunt for decent writing paper. She eventually finds some wedged in a narrow aisle between what looks like cat toys on one side and an impressive array of can openers on the other; she buys two sets of sheets with envelopes for the equivalent of about 20p, counts out the bronze coins – after a month, she’s finally learning to tell them apart – and hands them over, with fingers numb from cold through her thin, inadequate English gloves. It is with a small, perhaps unwarranted sense of victory that she returns to her flat, locates a pen that actually works, and sets about writing.

 _Dearest Serena_ , she starts, and then stops. Is it too personal? Not personal enough? She cycles through the alternatives – dear, my dear, my beloved – and swallows the lump that forms in her throat at each. Considering the odds of her either finishing or sending this letter are slim to none, she reasons, she’ll just power on through. She isn’t a poet and Serena ought to know it, by now, so _dearest_ it is.

 _I miss you every moment. You will likely never read this – I suspect one or other of us will throw it away before your eyes ever reach it – but I want to tell you I’m sorry, anyhow. I’m sorry for leaving you to lead AAU on your own with no prep time. I’m sorry for running away before we really had a chance to talk things through._ She pauses, wondering if that’s true, but supposes it is. Talking with Serena is never the chore it so often has been with Marcus. _I’m sorry I ran away and I’m sorry I hurt you when I did it. I’m miserable without you, if it’s any consolation._ She smiles, self-deprecating; knowing Serena and her penchant for vengeance, it may well be. She reaches over and takes a gulp of builders’ tea, now cold, and grips the pen tighter.

_I think about you all the time, Serena. I think about you every moment I’m not in theatre or working on the unit, and I think about you every moment I’m home in my flat alone, wishing you were here. I’ve brought this on myself, I know, and I don’t expect you to pity me. I don’t want pity. I just want you._

_I want you to be here, right now, with me. I want to see you standing before me, alive in the flesh instead of just in my mind. I want to hold you, Serena – God, I want to kiss you so desperately the lack of it is burning me up inside. I miss your eyes. I miss your smile. I miss your laugh. I miss your hand on my arm – I never noticed how precious those small touches are until I put 1500 miles between me and them, between us. God, I’m an idiot, Serena. I’m an idiot and a coward, but I still think it’s important for you to have time to make up your mind without me around._

_I wonder, every day, what you’re thinking and how you’re feeling. I wonder if you’ve come to your senses and realised I’m no great catch. I wonder if I’ve sabotaged my only chance and hope I haven’t. Because I still want you, Serena. I still care about you. I dream about you, your lips, your hands, your eyes. I l_ \-- and she stops. Freezes.

It’s true – she knows it’s true, has thought it a dozen times and felt it a hundred, but the terror that overwhelms her when she thinks about getting it out is too much, it’s just too much to take. She thinks hard for a moment, her knuckles white, and then continues. _I live every minute counting down the days until I can see you again. I’m sorry._

_Yours, Bernie._

Disgusted with her cowardice, not for the first time, Bernie storms outside to light up.


	2. Chapter 2

After that first one, she writes a new letter every couple of days, dating them and storing them chronologically in a folder she hides in the squeaky top drawer of her wooden desk. Sometimes, the letters are merely therapeutic: recounts of her experiences in theatre or on the ward, as close to writing a journal as a woman like Bernie could ever come; sometimes she quips about her difficulties in attempting to parse Ukrainian grammar or comments on the cold (with the occasional implication that Serena’s presence might assist in warming her up). Sometimes, though, Bernie takes the opportunity to pour her ever-growing longing for Serena into the words, and at those times she is candid, unguarded; emotionally vulnerable and sexually graphic in a way she never could be in person or on the phone. She writes in a kind of frenzied fury, as though slowing down will somehow strip her of her courage, her fingers pink from the indentation of the pen when she finally pauses, grimacing and cracking out her knuckles. Her hands are strong and dextrous by necessity of the job, but she isn’t used to this kind of strain; she was signing mountains of forms on AAU every day, but it’s been a good few years since she’s written much by hand. She and Alex never wrote, of course. No time.

A few weeks later – almost halfway through the secondment, almost, though she tries very hard not to think it – she’s well into the second pack of letters, considering braving the weather to stock up on more, when her phone starts to ring. The now-rare sound of it very near startles her in the quiet of the flat, but she has been expecting a call from Hanssen; that is the reason, at any rate, why she swipes her thumb across the screen and answers without really reading first. “Wolfe,” she says.

Silence.

Bernie frowns. “Hello? Mr Hanssen?”

Another pause, and then a wry voice that makes Bernie’s stomach twist in on itself, makes her fingers spasm against the phone in shock. “I suppose I could fetch him for you, if you’d really prefer it, but I was rather hoping you’d talk to me.” 

Bernie’s voice deserts her for two, three agonising seconds before she manages to pull herself together. “Serena,” she says, unnecessarily. Clears her throat. “I … wasn’t expecting you.”

“I’d never have guessed.”

Bernie stands up, starts to pace. “I’m sorry,” she hears herself saying, “I was expecting Hanssen to phone to discuss some details and I just … I didn’t pay attention when it started ringing, or I would’ve – I wouldn’t have—”

“Bernie,” Serena interrupts, a blend of exasperation and patience in her voice, “I understand.” 

“I—” Bernie starts, then stops. She sits down on the edge of the bed, tapping her socked foot against the floorboards. “I’m … so glad to hear from you, Serena. How – how are you?” She rolls her eyes at her utter lack of smoothness and hopes, desperately, that absence has made the heart grow fonder and Serena will be kind.

She’s in luck; she can hear Serena snort a quiet laugh on the other end of the line before she says, “I’m just fine, Bernie.” Sarcastic? Bernie isn’t sure. She presses the phone more tightly against her ear, as though that will help. Drums her fingers along her knee as the silence stretches. “Actually,” Serena says, with what sounds like forced cheer, “I was hoping to bend your ear on a work-related matter. Do you have a moment?”

Bernie sits up, relief flooding through her like a physical sensation, and nods though Serena can’t see it. “In fact I do,” she says. She glances around the empty room, takes in the drab colours and boring, practical furniture. “What can I help you with?”

They talk business: trauma laparotomies, paperwork, the chronic lack of NHS funding; what Bernie would have done today had she been in Serena’s place (which happens to be precisely what Serena had elected to do, though it takes at least three minutes and a few choice explanations for Bernie to convince her). They speak as though time has rewound to what Bernie simply thinks of as Before, as though there is no history beyond friendship and banter between them. They ask questions and exchange ideas with good-natured interest and efficiency, and Bernie – confused, disbelieving, cautiously hopeful – feels the hard, heavy thing that had knotted its way into her heart seven weeks ago finally begin to loosen.

But some time, of course, the steady flow of work topics starts to run dry, and Bernie clears her throat and risks asking after Jason. She’s actually got her fingers crossed as Serena considers the answer, and has to stop herself from sighing audibly in relief when Serena eventually says, “He’s … rather well, I dare say. Still going strong with the same girl, and he’s managed to land himself some duties in the hospital archive room that no one else had the slightest interest in doing. It’s … quite a good fit.”

Bernie finds she’s smiling, both at the image and the words, and she says, “Yes, I imagine it would be. Spending the day organising old records with very few pesky people to get in his way? Must be right up his alley. I’m … pleased for him. And for you.” She hesitates before adding, “Would you be so kind as to pass along my congratulations?”

“Of course,” Serena says, after a moment, but Bernie is fairly certain she hasn’t imagined the increased measure of warmth in her voice. “And how, ah – how is Kiev treating you, then?”

Bernie bites her tongue, an effort to stave off the surge of sudden longing to answer truthfully – _the work is fascinating and important but it’s miserable here, it’s miserable, I’m miserable without you_ – and nods. “Well. Ah – yes. Good. Fine.” She rolls her eyes at the ceiling, a search for inspiration that heeds no results. “It’s cold,” she offers, finally, and she is horrified by the sound Serena makes in response, is paralysed by the fear that she is crying – oh God, what then? – when she realises that, no, Serena is _laughing_. Laughing at her. Probably into a half-empty glass of Shiraz. 

When the laughter subsides, Serena sniffs once and then says, gruffly, “Well, I’m glad it’s cold. Serves you bloody right for taking off somewhere so ridiculous in the first place.”

Bernie collapses back on the bed to let the tension unfurl, and then wriggles up the mattress to her pillow, puffs it into the shape that best allows her sore back some relief. She switches the phone to her other ear. “I know better than to even try to argue with that,” she says, when she’s comfortable. “Seeing as you’re right.”

“And you admit it, just like that?” Serena’s voice is tart. “I can scarcely believe it.”

“I deserved that,” Bernie murmurs.

“Yes, you did. Just what the hell are you doing there, Bernie?”

There is another long stretch of silence, but at least Serena doesn’t hang up. Bernie is smart enough to realise that if she messes this up, she probably isn’t going to get another chance – it’s a miracle that Serena gave in and called her at all, she knows – so she takes her time, breathes in to try to steady the terror-fuelled pounding of her heart, and then releases the air in a rush. _Now or never, Wolfe_. “I’m sorry, Serena.”

She’d said it earlier, of course, but that had been a throwaway, overly-polite British sorry, a sorry she’d toss to anyone she had mildly inconvenienced; this apology, however, is real, is raw; is something she can’t get out without her voice quaking. She is ashamed of her own fear and weakness, wrenches her eyes shut against the onslaught of self-loathing that comes with it, and keeps talking mostly to escape the feeling. “I’m sorry I just up and left you with as good as no warning. It was stupid and selfish and cowardly and I – I’m so sorry.” After a moment where all she can hear is Serena’s breathing, she dares to add, “I … I miss you.” _I love you,_ she thinks, and shakes her head. Where the hell are her fags?

Maybe it’s the wrong thing to say; maybe Serena will fly off the handle and start yelling at her that it’s all her own fault, but maybe this period of no contact has given Serena time to process things, time to find her way to a reaction other than rage and betrayal. That really is the case, it seems, because Serena doesn’t yell; she just sighs, heavy and tired, like she’s been doing it a lot, lately. And then she says, “I miss you, too.”

So simple but so charged; Bernie is humbled by Serena’s willingness to admit to her emotion, and before she can really think about it, she’s started speaking. “I thought about calling, you know. Every day.” She doesn’t tell her she thought about running back in there to fix it, that she’s wished she’d done so every day since. “I think about you every day, Serena.” She coughs out a laugh. “It’s so good to say your name. I’ve – I’ve missed it. Serena.”

Serena snorts. “If you’re trying to be romantic—” she starts, and then stops.

“Just honest,” Bernie says, softly.

She’s passed that particular test, whatever it may have been; Bernie hears Serena adjust her position, rustle around – can’t help but wonder briefly if she’s in bed, and if so, what she’s wearing – and then Serena replies, “That makes a nice change, then.”

Bernie decides to let that one go. “Should I have called?” she asks instead, curious to a fault. “I didn’t want to … I just wanted to give you space, you know, I – I wanted it to … be your call, so to speak. Pardon the pun.”

“Oh, very amusing,” Serena drawls. “You do have a nasty habit of trying to give me space regardless of whether I want it or not, don’t you?” 

“I just thought—”

“No, you didn’t,” Serena snaps. “You didn’t think; you just ran. Didn’t give me a say at all, did you? You just decided, yet again, that Bernie Wolfe’s way was the only way, end of story.”

“Serena,” Bernie says, gently, helplessly, and Serena sighs.

“Perhaps I am still harbouring a little resentment toward you for leaving – not undeservedly, I might add. Still,” she says, after a pause, “you think this is bad, you ought to have seen me a month ago.” 

Bernie raises an eyebrow, unsure if she should respond.

“Poor Raf nearly lost his head.”

“Oh dear,” Bernie murmurs. “I’m sorry.”

“Well,” Serena bristles, “it can’t very well be helped now, can it.”

“No, it can’t.”

“And whatever your daft, sanctimonious notions about giving me time to make up my mind, I think I can say with certainty that you were right not to ring. If you’d tried, I suspect I’d have only bitten off your head, too.”

“And you would have been quite in the right,” Bernie says, “though I—”

“Don’t push it,” Serena warns. 

“I only wanted to say that I … I know I went about it badly, accepting the secondment and leaving—” _leaving you,_ she’d wanted to say, but that suddenly feels far too intimate, too loaded, “—leaving so soon, but for what it’s worth, I do still think that time apart wasn’t an utterly terrible idea. I wanted to—” she swallows. “I wanted to give you time to change your mind about this, Serena. About us. Me. I still do.”

She isn’t certain which response she’s expecting, exactly – yelling or laughing or hanging up the phone all have potential, and would each have their precedents – but it isn’t for Serena to give a long-suffering sigh and say, “Oh, for Pete’s sake, Bernie, grow up.”

Bernie startles. “I beg your pardon?”

“I said _grow up_. For whatever godforsaken reason, you are the person I’ve fallen for, and I know that. I accept that. In case you’ve forgotten, I have worked with you long enough to see a few of your different sides, and I want you for your wonderful qualities and your infuriating ones alike. Do you understand me? I’ve thought about it. I’m sure of it. So just give it a rest about me changing my mind or needing space, would you, or I’ll hang up this phone right now and never call again.”

That threat is surely genuine, but despite that, the fierce, uncompromising certainty in Serena’s speech is enough to knock the breath from Bernie’s lungs. Hearing those words – _I want you_ – from her lips, so matter of fact, so decided, has left Bernie’s heart in a flutter, her mouth parched. A moment passes with no response, and Serena says, “Bernie? You still there?”

“…yes,” Bernie manages; her voice is rough and lower than usual, and she swallows. “I’m here, Serena. I’m here, and – oh, I want you,” she says in a rush. “So very much. I want you all the time.”

Serena’s surprised hitch of breath through the phone is like water, reviving her.

“I’ve been writing you letters,” she blurts, before she can stop herself – she is riding on this feeling of renewed connection, the feeling that has just squashed 1500 miles down to a puff of breath in her ear and a quickening pulse. 

“I haven’t—I haven’t received any,” Serena says, and Bernie’s body pulses with heat at the shallowness of her voice. “Perhaps you sent them to Ric by mistake?”

“Oh, hilarious,” Bernie mutters. “No, I, uh – I didn’t send them.” She swallows, again. Her throat is still dry; she desperately needs a smoke. “Not yet.”

“I see,” Serena says. Then, coy, “What kind of letters?”

Bernie grips the phone harder and squeezes her thighs together, a last-ditch effort to curb the building heat. “Let’s just say,” she says slowly, “the kind I wouldn’t want to send to Ric by mistake.” Serena cackles triumphantly, and Bernie adds, “Along with some fascinating tales of day-to-day life in a Kiev trauma unit and a theory on Ukrainian sentence structure that I’m sure you’d find particularly riveting.”

“Oh, without doubt,” Serena murmurs, and her voice is pitched low with the promise of … Bernie gulps. “And when, pray tell, am I going to receive these letters?”

Now she’s done for. Bernie curses her inability to keep up her guard around this sly, stubborn, infuriating woman even when there are countries between them and Serena’s wicked smile is just in her mind – she curses herself and Serena and the world and her own fear and then she gives up. She gives in. “I suppose,” she says, slowly, “that I could put them – well, some of them – in the post. Perhaps tomorrow? If you really, ah—really mean it, that is.”

“Oh, I mean it,” Serena says, and sounds like it. “And I’ll tell you for free, Ms Wolfe, that you’d do well to start taking steps to get back into my good graces. You may recall a conversation we once had about grudges?”

“Message received loud and clear, Ma’am,” Bernie says, daring, dropping her voice even lower; she can practically feel Serena’s responding squirm through the phone, can definitely hear her breathing quicken, and she allows herself a grin of smug satisfaction. Her heart is still hammering, half in arousal and half in terror, at the thought of baring her soul when she’d never expected Serena to actually read a word she’s written—

—but she tries her best to push it away, to bury it deep; reminds herself that she wouldn’t be in this position, wouldn’t be facing this prospect at all if she hadn’t been such a sodding coward in the first place. Look on the bright side, she tells herself; at least she’ll be so far away when the letters arrive, when Serena reads them, that it might delay her mortification a little longer.

Bernie hears Serena yawn, though she seems to have muffled the sound, and Bernie – a mess of emotions, still alight with desire – decides to give her this out; supposes it’s safer, wiser, better to stop things from escalating too quickly when they’ve only just gotten in touch again. “It’s well past your bedtime, I should think,” she says, and Serena giggles, a sure sign that her trusty companion Shiraz has indeed put in an appearance this evening. 

“Trying to get rid of me, are you?”

“Of course not,” Bernie says, gently, though who could really blame her for the doubt? “I just don’t want to be responsible for your poor concentration tomorrow.”

Serena laughs humourlessly. “Oh, much as I appreciate the concern, that ship sailed weeks ago. Best try another.”

Bernie thumps her head against the pillow in frustration at herself. _Stupid_. “I’m sorry,” she says. “That was … thoughtless.”

“Yes, it was. And while I’m glad you recognise that, I’ve made a decision.”

Bernie swallows. “What’s that?”

“That I’m tired of hearing you apologise. You can go on feeling sorry, by all means – in fact you ought to – but I no longer want to know about it.”

“Uh,” Bernie says, eyebrows creasing, “all right.” Not exactly what she’d been expecting, but she’ll take it.

“Good. You’ll just have to … find other ways to make it up to me,” Serena says, and damn if her voice isn’t layer upon layer of dirty-minded suggestion. Bernie is still trying to figure out just how to go about breathing when Serena’s voice softens and she says, “And now I’ll go. Goodnight, Bernie.”

The sound of her name from Serena’s lips like that, so gentle, is the thing that makes the ache in her chest grow so strong she isn’t sure she can take it; instead of reciprocating, she finds herself asking instead, “Would you like me to ring you?” _Tomorrow_? “Some time?”

“No,” Serena says, after a moment, and Bernie feels stricken – she’s gone and buggered it up again, hasn’t she? – but then Serena goes on to say, “I’ll ring you. Some time.” And Bernie gets it: it seems petty, but it’s about control. It’s about saying she’s going to give Bernie a chance, because she cares for her, but she isn’t going to forgive and forget just because they had one suggestive late-night phone call.

Bernie relaxes; control she understands. Control she’ll sacrifice to Serena, here, now, repeatedly, if it means the chance to talk to her again. “Good,” Bernie says, easier now, the flirtatiousness creeping back into her voice. “I look forward to it.” She braves it to add, “I’ll be thinking of you.”

She hears Serena suck in a breath. “Likewise,” she says. “And I’ll expect your post soon. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Serena. Sleep tight.”

Bernie lies awake for a long time after that, thinking, and eventually falls asleep with the phone still pressed against her ear. She doesn’t dream.


	3. Chapter 3

True to her word, fingers trembling, Bernie shoves as many written sheets as she can into an envelope, scrawls down her return address on the back, and posts it the very next morning before she has time to talk herself out of it. She keeps it down to the one, at first, marks it ‘private’ and addresses it to AAU – C/o Ms Serena Campbell, Consultants’ Office – after a sudden fit of panic that Jason might open Serena’s mail at home. She has no idea of the speed or efficiency of the Ukrainian mail service, so she just pushes the envelope into the post-box and stalks away, determined to forget it until she hears word. She can’t forget it, of course, but the resolution at least allows her to get some work done without spending too much time staring into space.

It turns out, too, that knowing Serena will eventually read the letters changes the way she writes them, and she finds herself almost looking forward to getting home, to sitting down with her pen and her paper and her head full of thoughts and directing them at something – someone – tangible. It makes her feel closer to Serena, illogical though it may be.

A week and a half later, just as Bernie has climbed out of the shower and is standing in a dressing gown, roughly towelling dry her hair, she hears her phone ringing from the bedroom. She almost trips over her own feet in the rush to get there before it stops, and when she does, she only takes a moment to check it really is Serena before accepting the call. “Hello?”

“Hello there,” Serena says. Her voice sounds faraway and crackly; it isn’t a great connection, and Bernie wedges the phone between her ear and shoulder as she heads back into the steam-filled bathroom. “You sound out of breath. Been for a run?”

“Not in this weather.” Bernie chuckles. “Not even me. No, I was in the shower, had to run to find the phone.”

“…ah,” Serena says, after a moment. “Ah, good.”

Bernie takes her temporary lack of wit as a win. “Listen, can you hear me all right?” she asks. “The line’s quite broken at this end.”

“I can hear you just fine,” Serena says; Bernie hears a shuffle and a rustle and then Serena’s voice, more clearly: “Is that better?”

“Yes, much,” she says. “Thanks. I’m just going to put you on speaker, okay? Let me know if I need to turn up the volume.” She sets the phone upright against the tiles behind her small sink and retrieves her towel. “How’s it going, then?”

Serena picks up the question with ease, tells her about how Jason actually expressed interest in learning to make spaghetti – “I thought I was hearing things,” she says, “but perhaps there is a god, after all,” – and how Fletch’s daughter Evie had been admitted upstairs with complications from her neck injury that turned out, thankfully, to be far less serious than they’d feared. “Fletch was beside himself, of course,” Serena says.

Bernie has paused in the act of rubbing oil into her scar-tissue to listen. “Of course,” she says. “It wasn’t so long ago that Evie was on AAU, and he’s barely recovered from the stabbing himself.” She shakes her head. “Poor man. I’ll have to drop him a line.”

She thinks she can hear the smile in Serena’s voice when she says, “I know he’d like that. Sometime even he’ll get tired of playing four rounds of checkers a day with Raf.”

Bernie snorts. “Perhaps they should try something stimulating like Yahtzee instead.”

“Speaking of dropping lines,” Serena says, too casual, and Bernie holds her breath in anticipation. “Something interesting landed in my in-tray today.”

Bernie forces herself to close her open mouth, to continue to move her comb through her tangled wet hair. “Did it?” she asks. “Some exciting news from Hanssen, perhaps?”

“A girl can only dream,” Serena drawls, and Bernie grins. “I like the stationery. Where did you find it?”

“Kiev’s answer to Poundland, it would seem.”

Serena laughs. 

“But … thanks,” Bernie says. “I’d – I’d hoped you would.” She winces – was that too cheesy? Is it too late to take it back? -- but Serena seems content.

“I did,” she says. “I do. Good job I already had some experience deciphering your handwriting, though. I’d have had no chance if I were going in cold.”

“But I tried so hard!” Bernie cries. “I even held the paper at a 45-degree angle to compensate for my natural tendency to slant!”

Hair as well-behaved as she’s going to get it, she pulls on her makeshift pyjamas, picks up Serena’s voice and exchanges bathroom for bedroom. She keeps her on loudspeaker even once she gets there, enjoys the sound and feel of Serena’s laugh filling up the dull room.

“I’m sorry, darling,” Serena is saying, her voice as warm as it’s ever been, and Bernie’s pulse flutters at the offhand endearment. “I was only teasing. It really was lovely. Perfectly legible and lovely.”

“Now I know you’re just having me on, but I’ll be satisfied if you tell me you could make out most of what I wrote.”

“I could.” Serena is grinning – Bernie can hear it, and it’s catching. “I loved it, Bernie. Thank you for writing it. Thank you for sending it. It…” Serena pauses, clears her throat. “It meant a lot.”

“There were two letters, weren’t there?”

“Yes,” Serena says. “One from the 7th and one from the 9th. Is that…?”

“That’s right,” Bernie says. “The first two.” She sits up in bed, her head against the wall, and draws the blanket over her legs. Her pulse flutters harder as she forces herself to say, as casually as she can manage, “I’ll send the others, too, if you like. Now that I know that first lot’s arrived.”

“Please do,” Serena says. “Which reminds me – is there any particular reason you sent it to me at work?”

Bernie stills. “Was that a problem? Did someone—”

“No, no one saw it, no need to worry. I was only curious. I only wondered…” Serena lets out a low laugh. “I only wondered if you’d perhaps done it on purpose. In hopes of making me squirm.”

Bernie remembers her initial fantasy of Serena sitting there in their office, hot and bothered to distraction by Bernie’s words, and smirks. “I’ll admit that the thought crossed my mind,” she murmurs, and relishes Serena’s tiny groan. “Did it work?”

“You damn well know it did, Berenice Wolfe,” Serena says. “I had to go to a surgical consult with Guy and Ric right after I read it. I couldn’t stop thinking about you the entire time.”

Bernie barks out a laugh. “You mean you really read it in the office? You’re even more of a rebel than I thought.”

“And proud of it, too.”

“Actually, I addressed it to the office because I …” she trails off, suddenly unsure how to phrase it. “That is, I wasn’t certain how much privacy you really have at home. Post-wise.”

“Ah,” Serena says. “Yes.”

“It’s not that I think Jason would willingly invade your private things, I just—”

“I perfectly understand, Bernie, it’s all right. I think we can trust him to leave my mail untouched, but I will speak to him on the subject, just to be sure. Then you can send the next lot wherever you like.”

Bernie raises an eyebrow at that non-committal remark, possibility bright in her mind; she pitches her voice low and says, “Serena, would you _prefer_ me to send them to the ward?”

“Well, I—” Serena makes a barely audible sound that is almost a moan, and Bernie’s skin starts tingling all over.

“Because I will,” she says. “I’ll do it. I mean, if you want to close the door and the blinds and sit there all alone, reading about just what I’d do to you were I there, then who am I to stop you?” Her cheeks feel hot, her blood rushing, and Bernie thinks – with no small sense of satisfaction at the sound of Serena’s gasp – that she might yet get the hang of this phone sex thing. She can hear Serena’s breathing growing laboured, and it thrills her. “You wouldn’t even have to read the whole letter, would you? You could just open the first page and get a … a taste of what’s to come. Give you a little something to think about during your shift until you can go home, go to bed with a glass of Shiraz and … take your time with the rest.” The picture she’s painting – Serena, aching and wet and wanting from a day of pushing off thoughts of Bernie’s words – is causing no small turmoil in her own breathing, and she shifts, is unsurprised to feel the moisture between her legs. After a moment during which she tries to gather the remnants of her once-noteworthy self-control, she realises the other end of the line is still silent. She takes a breath. “Serena? Are you there?”

“…yes, I’m here,” comes the response, albeit a little … Bernie’s stomach flips. “Oh, Bernie,” Serena says, and her voice is wrecked; Bernie actually grips the phone tight and takes it off speaker, just to get the sound closer to her ear. “You’ll be the death of me.”

“What are you—” Bernie swallows around the words, licks her dry lips. Rests her free hand on her warm, quivering stomach. “What are you doing?”

“Watching the weather report.” A gruff laugh. “What do you bloody well think I’m doing, after hearing you go on like that?”

“Oh, God,” Bernie whispers, the confirmation alone enough to send her head spinning in ten different directions. “Serena.”

“Yes?”

Self-consciousness struggles to take hold of her but she pushes it away, pushes it down to focus on Serena, on her words. “Tell me,” she whispers; she can only get the words out if she whispers. “Tell me what you’re doing, tell me anything. Please.”

Serena groans at that, broken, and it’s only later that Bernie learns it was in response to the plea as much as the words that came before it. “I’m doing what you wrote about, Bernie,” she finally says. “I’m doing what you told me you’d be doing if you were here.” It seems to be a struggle for her to form the words at all, a fact that only makes Bernie’s body flood with more heat. “I’m _rehearsing_ ,” Serena says, half-laughing as she does, “for the real thing. Because I seem to have reverted to the age of,” —a gasp— “of sixteen, so I’m lying in bed with my fingers down my knickers, thinking of you.”

She is too far gone to make much of an effort at dirty talk, Bernie can tell, but at this point, Serena could recite the Holby City Ethics manual and Bernie would find it unbearably sexy, so her response – the only response – is to slip her impatient fingers those last few inches down, beneath the waistband of her shorts, to where she most needs them. 

“Oh, _God_ ,” she groans, when her fingers all but slide through the slickness she finds. She strokes her thumb upwards, just briefly, and has to pull it away again when she realises that through Serena’s voice, Serena’s throaty, breathless laughter, the image of Serena in bed, she is already on the verge of release herself. “Serena. Talk to me.”

“Are you doing what I’m doing, Bernie?” Serena asks, voice deep and rich like Shiraz.

“What?” Bernie asks, with a hitch of a laugh. “Watching the weather report?”

“Ex-exactly. High risk of moisture in the late evening,” Serena manages, and Bernie chuckles; the movement jerks her fingers and she moans.

“High-pressure system moving in swiftly,” she says, and takes a moment to enjoy the sound of Serena’s gasping laugh before she adds, “I can’t keep this up for long, Serena, I’m going to—”

“Me bloody too,” Serena huffs out, “so hurry up, because I’ve been waiting for you.” 

That does it. A few quick strokes and a curl of her fingers and Bernie is crashing, falling to pieces, crying Serena’s name; her head dropping against the wood of the bed as she arches up, her left hand sweaty and wrapped so tightly around the phone it almost hurts. She listens with tingling, aftershock-pleasure as Serena follows her, and Bernie urges her on – “Come now, Serena, come with me, _yes_ ,” – until Serena’s moans and gasps and the sound of Bernie’s own name fill her ears.

They are both quiet, afterwards, Serena regaining her breath, Bernie straining to hear her because she doesn’t want to miss a single hitch. Just as she’s starting to come down, just as the doubts are starting to wander back into her endorphin-drunk brain – was this all too much, too soon? Are they going to turn catatonic with embarrassment the next time they speak? Are they ever going to be able to speak again? – Serena lets out a languid, spine-tingling laugh and says, “Oh, that was _marvellous_. And not for the last time, I hope?” 

And Bernie wonders why she’d be worried at all.

*

Bernie keeps sending her letters – usually to the house, though she does occasionally address an especially racy one to AAU, just for kicks ( _I am desperate to feel your bare skin against mine, I am desperate to learn how you taste)_ \-- and they continue to speak on the phone about once a week. Bernie is never the one to initiate the calls and doesn’t try to change that; if allowing Serena this power enables such a freedom of communication between them, enables her to start to trust Bernie again, then so be it: God knows Serena’s forgiveness is a blessing she doesn’t deserve. So Serena calls if and when she wants to call, and Bernie will certainly never admit out loud to setting her phone beside her in the evenings, to glancing over at it every ten or fifteen minutes in the hope that that might encourage it to ring. On the nights when she isn’t working late or on the phone to Serena (or sometimes, to her infinite delight, Cameron), she keeps writing, and her letters get longer, deeper, braver – more intimate, though she doesn’t yet trust herself to sign them with _love_.

Then, one evening, after a particularly gruelling and frustrating shift where she’d lost two patients to both bad luck and bad timing, she arrives home, exhausted, to a letter. The postman had pushed it haphazardly through the thin grate in her door, so she notices it only after she has trodden on it with her muddy boot and then looked down. “Oh, blast,” she mutters. She picks up the envelope to brush off the dirt and sees Serena’s handwriting – only slightly more legible than her own but nonetheless unmistakable after months spent working together – and can’t help the stupid grin that breaks out on her face. Unless Serena’s having a laugh and the envelope contains nothing but an invitation to the Holby City Annual Charity Ball, it would seem she’s written back. The return address in the top right-hand corner is her work address, too, which would indicate … Bernie’s heart skips at the thought of Serena bent over her desk, tapping her pen against her lovely mouth, and writing to her in the _office_ —

She doesn’t rip it open immediately, despite the temptation. It had been sleeting outside when she’d had to run across the street, so she makes herself go through the motions of hanging her coat on the radiator, of toeing off her shoes and wet socks, of putting the kettle on. When it’s boiled, she takes her cup of tea (dosed liberally with whiskey for warmth), and folds herself into the armchair. She runs her still-cold fingers over the seal of the envelope, takes a moment to savour the fact that Serena wrote this, that she’s touching what Serena recently touched – and _then_ rips it open.

Serena has filled four pages, two sheets on both sides, and if Bernie didn’t know any better, she’d almost think … she brings the paper to her nose to inhale deeply, and yes, there it is: Serena has sprayed the paper with her perfume. It’s a scent Bernie likes, too, mild and fruity with a hint of spice; she’d made a casual comment about it – months ago, now, long before anything concrete existed between them – and it’s a touching thought, that Serena remembered; that she had noticed Bernie’s preferences and cared, even then. A heady breath of it throws Bernie right back to their office, to where they’d kissed for the second time, Serena’s eyes so guileless and imploring, her lips so warm and sweet when they’d met halfway, arms winding around one another, Serena’s soft moans kicking Bernie’s lust-addled brain into overdrive—

—and knowing Serena, she thinks, shaking her head at the heat coursing through her, that was precisely her intention. She checks that the pages are in order (Serena has dated and numbered hers, too), and starts to read. The letter begins, _My dear, dear Bernie,_ and Bernie takes a big gulp of tea, her heart swelling, and thinks that it’s already off to a promising start.

_How very Austen-esque this all is. Do you have any idea how many years it’s been since I wrote a letter? Before Australia was discovered, I’m fairly sure. I am writing to you from our office – and I do still think of it as our office, despite the fact that it’s far too tidy for you to have recently been anywhere near it – while the empty supply requisition form beside me awaits my attention, and I can hear Raf chasing one of Fletch’s children down the hallway. I have a dozen phone calls to make and two dozen emails to send. I need to stop by Waitrose on the way home, and before that I need to meet with our esteemed Mr Hanssen. I could be doing any number of these things right now (ought to be, in fact), and yet I am going to write to you instead. Would you like to know why?_

Bernie hunkers down in her chair, biting her lip to try not to smile, utterly enraptured by Serena’s deft, conversational style, by the fact that she almost feels like Serena is in the room with her, gesturing madly and rolling her eyes.

_I am writing to you, Bernie, because I have spent the better part of the morning thinking of nothing but you, and replaying, like a broken record, the words and subsequent imagery generated by your latest missive. To say that you have distracted me would be akin to likening Atilla the Hun to an angry poodle. I see you everywhere, in everything. I glance up from where I’m working and look over to your desk, and I see you perched on it, laughing; I see you leaning against it, watching me with those eyes of yours that seem to strip me bare. I see you as you were when you were here, and I also see things that haven’t happened (yet) – I imagine your strong arms around me, pushing me onto your desk so you can have your way with me right then and there, in the middle of the day, when someone could knock and walk in at any time. I look around the ward and see a flash of blond hair and scrubs and want it to be you. Sometimes I even manage to convince myself it could be you, and then when the person turns around and proves not to be, I find I am irrationally furious. Every time I drink a glass of Shiraz, I imagine sharing it with you. I remember the way you looked at me over your glass that night at Albie’s – the first night we went there with Jason, do you remember? I’ll never forget it, the first time I realised that you wanted me and that I wanted you back just as badly. That was the night I knew, do you know that? I went home and brought myself pleasure as I thought of you, Bernie Wolfe: your steady hands, your smoky voice, your brilliant mind, your fabulous body, your smouldering eyes…_

It goes on in much the same fashion, poetic and generous and positively dripping with lust, and it is only when Serena starts to go into specifics – her fantasies about running her tongue all over Bernie’s body, for instance, or the way she imagines Bernie’s hair must look all tousled from sex – that Bernie realises she has been trying to drink from a cold, empty cup. Her skin is flaming, her heartbeat frantic; she has to stick her head out the window and have a smoke before she can even think about reading the rest.

When she does, the rest is … dear _God_. Bernie had always suspected Serena had a naughty side, even before she had glimpsed it – felt it, experienced it – for herself, but this is something else. This is surpassing Bernie’s many, varied fantasies and rendering them timid; Serena goes on to insinuate that she has been reading lesbian books, that she has been watching lesbian television (there’s lesbian television, Bernie wonders? Why did she not get that in Kabul?) for the purpose of _research_. That she has been studying intently, that her knowledge base will be about as broad as it can be, soon, and that the next logical step will be to _put it into practice._

 _I trust that I can rely on my esteemed colleague, Ms Berenice Wolfe, for assistance in this matter_ , she writes, and the words all but sing in Serena’s teasing voice. Bernie should have known that if anyone could turn bureaucratic report-writing speech into a page of sexual suggestion, it would be Serena Campbell. _I believe the aforementioned to be perfectly suited to this undertaking, and should not wish to entrust the duty to any other. I eagerly await our collaboration in this regard, and occupy myself daily with the appropriate preparations._

The next line swims before Bernie’s eyes, her short-circuited brain unable to process anything for a good few seconds. When it is and she keeps reading, it’s as though Serena has flipped a switch, and is back to the warm, general-audience-appropriate woman that Bernie first knew. She wishes Bernie peaceful nights and success at work until the next time they talk; wishes her a slight variation on bone-chilling cold and rain; gently reminds her, in the sub-clause to follow, that she had wanted to buy some new gloves (which Bernie had indeed forgotten). _I miss you,_ she writes, _and look forward to talking to you again soon._ She even signs it, _Your esteemed colleague, Ms Serena Campbell,_ which makes Bernie laugh and hug the paper to her chest in an embarrassing show of emotion she’s very glad no one else is there to witness.

It’s romantic, really, the way Serena etches her energy and personality into every word, the way she crafts her letters to allow Bernie to read wit and cleverness and flirtatiousness in every line. Very romantic, she thinks, as she sets aside her empty cup and strides over into her bedroom, letter still in hand. She’ll start writing back tonight, her own attempt at reciprocal romance; she’s just got a little distraction to take care of, first.


	4. Chapter 4

One thing they never talk about – an unspoken rule, so to speak – is how long there is to go until Bernie returns. They now speak with relative ease of feeling each other’s absence, and continue to talk business and family on both ends, though Bernie is usually more interested in hearing what Serena has to say than in talking herself. She tells her share of ward stories, but Serena is discerning enough to realise that while Bernie’s relationships with her new colleagues are professionally steady, that she is respected, she hasn’t made an overwhelming number of friends.

“It’s partly the language,” she admits, one night, when Serena asks her if there’s no one with whom she has much in common. “But it’s also me. You may not have noticed this, Serena, but I can be … somewhat challenging to get to know.”

“Hmm,” Serena says. Bernie raises an eyebrow; it surprises her that Serena hasn’t taken the opportunity to tease her for her notoriously less-than-stellar people skills. She is contemplating asking why she deserves kid-glove treatment when Serena says, “I just – and don’t take this the wrong way, all right? – I just hope you’re not too lonely out there. Not that it wouldn’t be your own fault if you were.”

Despite the barb (and fair play, she thinks), Bernie digests this concern with the usual array of emotions – dismissal, disbelief, embarrassment; a violent surge of affection; mild terror that anyone could care about her enough to say such a thing – and then chuckles, stalling for time. “I’m fine, Serena. I am.”

“But really,” Serena presses, “I do wonder if you are. No gang to go out for drinks with after a gruelling shift? No Albie’s?” Bernie can just imagine her shaking her head. “Really, Bernie, are you sure you’re drinking enough?”

Bernie glances over at the slow-growing collection of empty bottles beside her DIY shoe-rack (a plank of wood she’d discovered discarded in a nearby alleyway, now suspended over two also-discarded bricks; she will always grab any excuse to not have to go shopping). She fails horribly at keeping the laugh out of her voice when she says, “No need to worry on that front, Ms Campbell. I think I’ve got it covered.”

“I’ll take your word for it, then. How is the wine over there, anyway?”

“Sweet,” Bernie says, with a grin. “You’d hate it.”

“Good lord, it keep getting worse. No Shiraz?”

“Only imported,” Bernie says, “but I … I haven’t been drinking it much, I must admit.”

“Right, I’ve heard enough, woman: get back here right now.”

“It’s all right,” Bernie says, waving a hand that Serena can’t see. She’s still smiling. “I’ve got a few bottles of the hard stuff up my sleeve for the bad days.”

Serena chuckles. “In that case, my fears are appeased. Though I may have been worried if you’d have said _rainy days_.” After a moment, she asks, incredulously, “Are you _really_ not drinking Shiraz?”

“I’m really not drinking Shiraz, Serena, hard as that may be to believe.” She shakes her head on a laugh, curls her feet beneath her in her armchair. “It, uh … it reminds me of you,” she admits.

“Is that a bad thing?”

“Of course not,” Bernie says. “It just … saddened me, I suppose, at first. Before we were speaking again. And now…”

“Now what?”

“Now I don’t want to break the streak just for nothing. I’d rather wait until we’re together again.” She realises, after she’s said it, exactly how it sounds; afraid of pressuring Serena with the sentiment, she races to find the words with which she can tactfully backpedal, but then—

“I think I approve of that plan,” Serena is saying easily; she doesn’t seem scared, doesn’t even seem shocked, and Bernie pauses in her freaking out to consider that maybe, this time, it might not be necessary. Phone glued to her ear, she doesn’t move. Waits. “In fact,” Serena says, her voice a study in casualness, “I may even join you in this resolution to … wait for a special occasion.”

Bernie sits forward, mouth dropping open. “No.”

“No?”

“I just mean … Serena, I couldn’t possibly expect you to … are you really sure you want to do that?”

“Sure, why not?” Bernie can just picture Serena’s dismissive gesture, the clearest indication of her mind already made up. “So I’ll drink Malbec for two weeks. It won’t kill me.”

Bernie snorts. “Are you quite sure of that?”

“One way to find out,” Serena mutters, but Bernie can hear that she’s smiling, shakes her head in disbelief.

“You truly are an incredible woman, Serena Campbell, do you know that?”

“In fact I do,” Serena says, “but I shan’t complain about hearing it again. Not from you.”

Bernie laughs. “Right you are. I’ll make sure to say it more often, then.” She takes a deep breath, her heart skittering against her ribs, and takes the plunge. “For the next two weeks, and, and after,” she says. She swallows, throat dry. “If you’ll have me.” A part of her can’t believe she’s said it – that she’s dared, eternal coward that she is – but their physical distance has lent her the mettle she needed to do what she’s wanted to do, really, since she kissed Serena on the floor of an empty operating theatre, a whim that was months in the making.

She is in an agony of uncertainty in the second (day, week) it takes Serena to form an answer, and then: “Oh, Bernie,” Serena says on a laugh, “it’s about bloody time.”

Two weeks has never felt like so long.

*

In Serena’s next letter, the one Bernie receives two days before she’s due to fly back to Heathrow, she writes: _There’s something I can’t help wondering._ This is the opening line – or at least the one that follows _My darling Bernie_ , though she had lingered on that one and reread it about sixteen times before she could bring herself to go on – and Bernie raises her eyebrows at its directness. She is still rugged up in her thick winter coat and the gloves Serena had sent her (she never did get around to replacing her own), but plonks down in the armchair anyway, the only piece of furniture besides the bed and the coffee table that’s still standing. 

_It’s this: how am I to refer to you, in my head? I feel we’re both past the age where we can use ‘girlfriend’ in a sentence without sounding like we’re trying to reclaim our wayward youth. ‘Lover’ has a nice ring to it, I suppose, but do our cross-continental encounters over paper and telephone, however passionately satisfying, qualify us to that particular definition? Perhaps I ought to invent a word specifically relevant to us. How would you like me to call you my She-raz?_

Bernie actually groans at that, and not in a sexy way.

_People might ask us. They know you are due to return, and they might even ask me before you do, and I ask myself what I would say in response. Are we a couple? They might ask, and indeed we are: a couple of fabulous if occasionally irrational geniuses who deserve no less than the best. Are we ‘together’? That we are, too – you have my back and I have yours, gorgeous thing that it is; we share an office, and I hope I’ll soon be able to say that we frequently share a number of glorious, unadulterated nights of debauchery as well._

_Well, perhaps I shan’t say that last part out loud, not to anyone else. Wouldn’t want them getting jealous, now, would we? Perhaps my deviousness in sending this letter when I did has paid off – perhaps you have already left, and are eating over-oiled peanuts on an early flight back to London, back to me. Or perhaps you’ve seen this and uncovered me and my fanciful, girlish nonsense and I ought to be preparing for a life sentence of exceedingly ill-timed mortification._

_Whether you see this or you don’t, I had to write one last time. The stack of your letters recently grew so tall that I had to move half of them into another drawer, and when Jason saw it and asked why I didn’t just remove them entirely, I had to confess that it was a comfort to have them there in your stead. Knowing that you are expected to land in so short a time has rendered me a jittering ball of nerves – poor Raf has no idea what to do with me, and is quite terrified that he can no longer ply me with Shiraz to make me cooperate._

_Oh, Bernie, I can’t wait to see you. I can’t wait to hear your voice in person, to touch you again. I can’t wait to drink Shiraz with you. This time next week you’ll be back here with me, and right it is, but on the off-chance that your plane should meet an untimely demise somewhere over Prague, I wanted to tell you that I love you. I love you, Berenice Wolfe, you ridiculous, impossible woman. Don’t hold it against me. I’ve held it in for too long myself and can do so no longer._

_Come home safe, Bernie. I’m counting down the days._

_Love, Serena._

She has to read it four times from start to finish before she can really process what it means, and even then, she feels a little like someone has just switched on a hundred-watt lamp right in front of her: like the contrast makes the world too bright, like her instinct is to close her eyes and turn her head away; like if she waits, lets herself adjust, the discomfort might pass and it might be even better than before.

Bernie waits. She clutches the paper so tightly between her fingers that she feels it starting to wear, and releases it, flexing her muscles, before she can crush it completely. She waits; she breathes in, shaky, one-two-three, and lets it out again.

She loves her, Bernie thinks. Serena loves her.

She rolls the words over and over, soundless on her tongue, until they begin to lose meaning. And then she allows herself, tentatively, daringly, to wonder: how much does that fact really change? Serena loves her. Serena already loved her when she raced out of AAU and England like a bat out of hell, and she knows that; she can admit, now, that it’s why she ran. It’s why – or a large part of why – she is currently sitting alone in a colourless flat in Kiev, missing Serena, angling for whiffs of Serena’s perfume, _wanting_ Serena. Loving Serena. She loves Serena. She knows that, too.

Suddenly, it occurs to Bernie that she’s been rather stupid.

*

Her flight has a two-hour layover in Munich, which Bernie spends on an alternate rotation of pacing, panicking, and wondering if it’s too late to find suitable duty-free gifts for her children. She’d spent a week and a half torturing herself for inspiration for what to bring back for Serena, and had settled, in the end, on an imported bottle of rich, spicy Shiraz, complete with Cyrillic symbols and the occasional badly-translated description. She figured it might be nice for them to drink it together – too sappy? – and had brought along a bottle of Malbec too, mostly as a joke; a back-up weapon to help her defuse any tension, if she needs it. She hopes she won’t. She doubts she will.

By the time she hears the first boarding call over the airport PA, Bernie is empty-handed but for a cut-price box of Toblerone (for Jason) and a bottle of Jamaica rum (for herself). She gives it up; she’ll give Cam the unopened bottle of revolting Ukrainian hooch still clinking around in her case, and Charlotte, if she’ll take it, one of the several extra letter-and-envelope sets she’d bought and kept because she’s a sentimental old fool. Cameron drinks, Charlotte writes letters; it’s the best she can do.

The mostly-fruitless errand has at least had the advantage of taking her mind off her jangling nerves. It’s only 9 o’clock in the morning when she boards, but she accepts a glass of dry white wine that she drinks without really tasting, giving the flight attendant’s raised eyebrow a glare of her own.

“I’m a doctor,” she tells him. “It’s medicinal.”

“Yes, of course,” he says, but he’s smirking, the git.

She must lose a pound to all the exercise her restless legs are giving her – the poor bloke next to her glances over once or twice but doesn’t say anything; wise move, is all she can think – and then, approximately 850,000 years later, the plane begins its descent. She’s on the aisle, so she doesn’t see much of their drop into London, but when she does first get a glimpse out the windows, there’s something about the familiar sight of all that grey and green that makes her smile. It always does.

She gets through immigration and customs – British citizen, nothing to declare – and her case is already circling on the baggage carousel when she comes out. She hefts it off easily, lags behind a few moments to assist an older couple with theirs; receives their grateful arm-pats and handshakes with a self-conscious smile. 

And then she’s standing there, ready, and there’s nothing left to lose; there are no more excuses, no more delays, no other answer to the question posed by the erratic pounding of her heart. If she didn’t literally know better, she’d expect that her heart was about to fall out of her chest; she takes a breath in, gives herself a pep talk – _you’ve gotten through worse, Wolfe, now move it along_ – and forces her legs to move, to walk, to take her down the ramp and into Arrivals.

For a moment, she is overwhelmed – so much colour, so many people, so much noise – and then something catches her eye; a hand, waving madly, a mop of curly hair and a grin that might on occasion have been called unnerving. Jason lopes over to her, talking a mile a minute, and greets her with a handshake that would relieve a lesser woman of the use of her arm; she laughs and answers his questions, makes sure to smile at him, to make eye contact – she really is glad to see him, it’s just—

—and then there she is: Serena, _Serena_ , walking toward her, her hair a little longer but otherwise exactly the same, and her cheeks are glowing and she’s trying her hardest to hold in a smile and doing a miserable job of it.

“Look, Auntie Serena, I found her! I found Dr. Bernie!”

“Yes, you did,” Serena says, but her gaze doesn’t leave Bernie’s. “Hello, stranger,” she says, her eyes crinkling with mirth, and Bernie – damn it to hell – drops her bag on the floor (over the sound of Jason’s protest that that is in direct violation of Heathrow’s baggage policy) and pulls Serena into a bone-crushing hug, tears prickling her eyes at the feel of Serena’s arms folding around her, at the rightness of being enveloped by her scent and her warmth.

“Hello, yourself,” Bernie whispers into her hair, and then she pours those months of longing, of pining, of senseless desperation and letters and phone calls and dreams and love into a kiss she soon forgets is public. It is only out of necessity that she pulls back to breathe, Serena’s lips red and her fingers wound deliciously, almost painfully into Bernie’s unkempt hair; she realises Serena is laughing, realises a huddle of teenagers standing near them is wolf-whistling, and Bernie feels the heat flood her cheeks.

“Oh, dear,” she murmurs. Her voice is scratchy, and – oh, God, she just kissed Serena in the middle of the Heathrow Arrivals lounge in front of a hundred witnesses, including _Jason_ , and, “Oh, _dear_ ,” she says again, but when she looks back down at Serena, Serena’s eyes are still shining with humour, and she forgets how to speak.

Fortunately, Serena has no such trouble. She runs a thumb over Bernie’s cheekbone, across her chin, down her neck – touching, it seems, just because she can. “I take it you’re pleased to see me, then?” she teases.

“Ah,” Bernie says, embarrassed laughter bubbling up before she can stop it, “rather, yes. I … didn’t mean to do that, Serena. Well, I, I did mean to do it, of course, just not – not here, exactly—”

Serena cuts her off with a kiss, a method of conversational cessation to which Bernie is hardly opposed. “It’s all right, Bernie,” she says. She understands, of course, that Bernie is babbling because she’s nervous; she always does. “It’s all right,” she says again, softer. “You’re home.”

They are gazing at each other, Bernie seriously contemplating giving in to the temptation to kiss her again, right here, when Jason interrupts them. He is standing a few yards off, Bernie’s carry-on bag on his shoulder, her case in hand. “Are you two ever going to stop standing there?” he calls. “We only have a half-hour parking space, you know. You can kiss each other just as well at home.”

“Hard to argue with logic like that,” Bernie says, grinning. “Shall we?”

“Let’s.” Serena extends her hand and Bernie takes it, entwines their fingers, and together, they follow Jason outside and into the crisp winter sun.


End file.
